


Hindsight

by SirJosephBanksFRS



Category: Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-27
Updated: 2013-06-27
Packaged: 2017-12-16 08:43:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/860192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SirJosephBanksFRS/pseuds/SirJosephBanksFRS
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Towards the end of <i>The Hundred Days</i>,  Stephen comes to a startling realization and discusses it with Jack in the great cabin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hindsight

It was relatively early, before the end of the last dog watch, on a lovely Saturday evening in late May in the waters of the western Mediterranean.  Up on the deck of _Surprise_ , the hands were making merry, singing and dancing, as was _Surprise's_ Saturday night custom. The sun was completely gone from the sky. In the great cabin, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin had eaten their toasted Funchal cheese and the petit fours, had drunk the two decanters Killick had brought in that evening, one of port and one of Jack’s capital new Madeira. Despite the noise, they had played Corelli’s violin and cello sonata IX, opus 5.  Jack was yawning and putting his fiddle away as he thought how even more than usually dispirited and distracted Stephen had seemed this evening, their music not having served as an effective diversion from what was certainly his ongoing grief over Diana’s recent death in early March. Stephen put his 'cello in its place and turned in his chair and faced Jack, his pale eyes set in sadness as he looked into Jack's face.  
  
"Listen, Jack, would you, something has troubled me greatly since the end of March. I have resolved to put it out of my mind repeatedly without effect. It troubles me still now, so I will mention it and then we need never speak of it again. I spoke rather sharply and severely to you when Diana was driving us to your rendezvous with _Bellona_ and you spoke to her about the bridge. I am sure you remember that morning."  
  
Jack was nonplussed. He knew exactly what Stephen was referring to and he himself had thought of it many times, a fact he would not ever admit to Stephen. Jack had never been more unhappy to be right about anything in his life. He did not know what was worse, admitting to remembering the incident or feigning not remembering, which would result in Stephen being forced to elaborate. Jack made a noncommittal noise of assent as he avoided Stephen's eyes.  
  
"Of course, Jack, you were right. You were entirely in the right about the bridge being dangerous. You were absolutely in the right to speak to Diana that morning, not knowing if she knew the bridge and knowing she was driving far too fast. And so, I ask your pardon, my dear."  
  
"Oh, Stephen," Jack said, sorrowfully. "We need never speak of this."  
  
"Perhaps after I have apologized to you, I shall stop reliving that day in my mind." Jack stepped towards Stephen and touched his shoulder. "I do not blame myself;" Stephen said, with conviction that he did not possess, "Diana was most headstrong and nothing I did nor said would have made one whit of difference in all likelihood.  But, Jack, I am sorry for the way I spoke to you. I cringe to think of it now."  
  
"Stephen, pray do not vex yourself for one second." Jack said, quietly.  
  
"You were completely right. I thank God Diana almost never took Brigid with her when she went driving."  Stephen took his spectacles off and rubbed his eyes. "I asked her to swear to me to never have Brigid on the box with her." Stephen said, bowing his head. "Not that she probably would have; I think Diana would have found the presence of any child too distracting. But I compelled her to swear..." Stephen said and his throat constricted. Jack said nothing but looked at him with eyes full of sorrow.  
  
"I know you have seen things happen with the ship that you observed the antecedents and you knew what the consequents must necessarily be. But still, you hoped for the best that perhaps that spar would not be carried away, somehow. Diana's manner of driving and her coach and horses and that bridge were an equation with an eventually near inevitable solution. Why did I not do more? Jack, I was a coward; I was so averse to ever criticising her. I told myself that it was my liberality, that I did not presume to patronise her for being a woman. But deep down, I conceived wholly how dangerous it was and her innate recklessness, because I made her swear to me never to have Brigid on the box..." Stephen broke off, his eyes smarting. He looked away and rubbed his eyes. Jack was silent.  
  
"Diana called you a coward that day. She did so in front of Heneage, she said it to people who were strangers to us and of course, in front of me. I was not so very sympathetic to you. I was not happy that she spoke to you thus, but I believed that you brought it upon yourself and that you at least in some small measure deserved it. Not that you were a coward, of course, but that you had annoyed her very predictably and as she was doing us a favour, you deserved her opprobrium." Stephen said, his voice near breaking. He was silent for a few moments and the looked up directly into Jack's eyes.  
  
"And I was the coward, Jack, because I thought the same thing and I never dared voice it. Sure, she was a very fine whip, she drove better than most men, virtually any man; but it was obvious folly, gross folly to tear at breakneck speed across that wicked bridge. I should have said as much to anyone on earth but Diana." Jack took Stephen's hand in his.  
  
"I may see an event about to happen, but that don't mean I have any ability to prevent it from happening."  
  
"Jack, you tried and I did not. It is not that I did not prevent her death, 'tis that my fear prevented me from saying that which I should have said to anyone else and I called my silence esteem; affection, love, respect. And it was naught but fear. I had no idea I was such a coward."  
  
"Upon my word and honour,  you are no coward, Stephen,” Jack said quietly, ”You are the bravest man I have ever known."  
  
"I am far less brave than you."  
  
"The relation is different, not being married. There are things I should not dare to ever say to Sophie, I could say to another woman; just as you may say things to Sophie that I dare not. It ain’t cowardice, it’s discretion.”  
  
"But that day you asked me to say something to her and I refused. I knew from you that the bridge was dangerous and I refused."  
  
"You thought that speaking to her thus would make it more dangerous, that it should distract her." Stephen said nothing. "Pray do not upbraid yourself so, Stephen." Jack said. "Marriage is often keeping the peace even when you know better, especially when you know better. That don’t make a man a coward. I never said a word about Mother Williams to Sophie, God rest her soul. What could I say? And that woman did everything she possibly could to destroy our marriage. She hated me with a passion and I was never anything but civil to her -- more than civil. She sat at my table in my house and poured venom into her daughter's ear for more than ten years. To the best of my knowledge, she did not hate Frankie or Cissy's husbands the way she hated me and for God knows what reason, she had to live in my home and blackguard me to my own children. Did I ever breathe a word to Sophie? I did not. Because it would have changed nothing, except for forcing her to defend her mother against me, causing arguments and making her resent me. Was that cowardice?"  
  
"No, soul, but perhaps it is not quite analogous." Stephen said and he looked pained.  
  
"Not wanting to anger your wife does not make you a coward. It makes you a husband. Diana is far more high spirited than Sophie, and brother, I do not wish to go at it with Sophie. Dear Lord. The bosun ain’t in it compared to an angry wife and it avails one nothing. Absolutely nothing. I want to meet the man who wins an argument with his wife; Lord knows I never have.”  
  
“Oh, Jack...” Stephen said and he wept silently to Jack’s utter dismay, as Jack realized that Stephen would neither be having nor losing any arguments to Diana, who existed solely in the past tense.  
  
“My dearest Stephen, I beg your pardon.” Jack said, distraught. “Oh, Lord, I am laid by the lee again.” Stephen shook his head wordlessly and buried his face in his hands. “Pray forgive me, Stephen. I am such a fool, such a goddamned fool." Jack said and there were tears in his own eyes. He knelt next to Stephen, still sitting in the chair and embraced him around the waist, his golden head bowed in Stephen's lap. Stephen stroked Jack’s queue and took his handkerchief from his waistcoat and wiped his eyes.  
  
“No, it is not you; there is nothing to forgive. I beg pardon. I try not to think about this very much as I am not yet the master of my sentiments. It is a type of convalescence and I have overdone it for one day, the fault lies entirely with me. Pray lock the door." Jack rose and went to the door.  
  
"Killick there!" Killick was at the door immediately.  
  
"Sir?"  
  
"You are done for the night. I will see you in the morning. Three bells in the morning watch, if you please." Killick surreptitiously apprised himself of the Doctor's sorrowful mien and the Captain’s somberness.  
  
"Yes, sir. G'night, sir." Killick said, bowing and knuckling his forehead. Jack closed the door and locked it and came back and pulled his chair next to Stephen. Stephen took his hand.  
  
"Jack, you are my dearest friend on earth and the only one with whom I can discuss Diana at all. I hope the day will come, with the blessing, when I can say her name without feeling a mortal pain. I fear I dishonour her memory by not being able to remember her without sorrow." Jack said nothing, looking into Stephen's face and reached and stroked his very thin hair.  
  
Stephen touched Jack's cheek and leaned forward and kissed him very tenderly. Jack embraced him, leaning into him and kissing him deeply. Stephen pulled gently away and said, "If you please, let us move to the stern lockers."  
  
They sat side by side, looking out at the light of the waning moon on the inky blackness of the waves.  
  
"I was your guest in these waters fifteen years ago." Stephen said. "It seems a lifetime ago that we shared your cabin on the _Sophie_ , does it not? Little did we know England would still be at war against  Buonaparte fifteen years later. You shall retire to the country an old man and tell your grandchildren your adventures in thirty years of warfare against France."  
  
"I don't think it will be that much longer, for good or for ill."  
  
"What is the ill? Buonaparte's victory or the war ending?"  
  
"Why, both or perhaps I should say either. I suppose that is a wicked thing to say, ain't it? Well, we have our hydrographical voyage, come what may, touch wood." Jack stroked the frame of the stern window. "Stephen, I don't know if I shall ever hoist my flag, especially if peace breaks out, but..." Jack broke off, looking out the window. "I wish I might share the cabin with you until I can no longer make it up the lubber's hole because I am so old and fat that I have to retire to Bath, God forbid, like every pompous windbag that ever walked the quarterdeck. That is assuming I don't get knocked on the head, first, of course."  
  
He took Stephen's hand in his. "One thing has not changed in all of these years. You are still the strongest and the bravest man I have ever had the honour to know." Jack said and he brought Stephen's hand to his lips and kissed it very tenderly. He looked up into Stephen's eyes, his own bright blue eyes darkened by the dilation of his pupils in the dimness of the cabin.  
  
"I should say the exact same words to you, Jack Aubrey." Jack leaned forward and undid Stephen's neckcloth, kissing his neck.  
  
"The fact I was murdering time at the Governor's music-room in Mahón was the luckiest accident of my life, even if it did end with you giving me a blow." Jack said.  
  
"It was not a blow." Stephen chided.  
  
"Well, it was very like a blow." Jack said.  
  
"It was more of a nudge."  
  
"You looked at me so hellfire fierce I did not know if you were about to call me out. I was in such low spirits that evening."  
  
"Faith, you never told me that in all these years. I thought you were ebullient over your promotion."  
  
"Ah, but if you remember, I did not get it until I went back to the Crown, after midnight. That was poor old Harte's _ruse de guerre_." Jack leaned forward. "You were in a brown study that night."  
  
"Was I? I expect so. I had not eaten an entire meal in quite some time. I arrived hoping there would be food and there was none. I did manage to pilfer some oranges from the garden on the way out, but they were not sweet at all."  
  
"How long had it been since you had supped?"  
  
"About seventy-two hours, if I remember correctly. I suppose that explains why I was somewhat irritable. When I told you that you could find me at Joselito's, I did not actually have money for even a cup of chocolate. I owed them for the past fortnight and I was begging off, always on waiting for the post. I did not want you to think that I was shy and I had no lodgings to give you the direction of, so I told you I would be there."  
  
"Lord, Stephen, what a pair we was." Jack said shaking his head and laughing. Stephen looked up intently in Jack’s face and took his hand and spoke very softly.  
  
"That afternoon in my room at the Grapes... how did you know that I reciprocated your feelings?"  
  
"I did not know. I had no idea of it."  
  
"What was your plan if I rebuffed you?"  
  
"I had no plan, Stephen."  
  
"You were so certain of yourself?"  
  
"I acted on impulse. I had no idea that I was going to do what I did until I had the intention and then I just acted."  
  
"What impelled you to be so rash?" Jack sighed.  
  
"I do not rightly know. Twas the strangest thing. I felt the very deepest affection for you. You was away in Spain and I missed you dreadfully. I was on the _Lively_ and I thought about you constantly. One day, I had the realization that I loved you. It shocked me. I did not know how to make sense of it. I felt as though I was going mad. It was so very singular, Stephen. I found myself thinking about kissing you, leaning forward and kissing you. I tried to completely put it out of my head. I so wished you were on board so you could dose me, though I did not have any idea how I should explain what was wrong with me. I had decided I should never breathe a word to you and then I went to our rendezvous at Cala Blau and you was not there. I felt the very bottom of my soul drop out. Nothing has ever upset me more in my entire life. Something happened in me and I had to tell you. I could not stand the idea of either of us dying without me having told you." Jack took Stephen's other hand in his.  
  
"I am sorry to be so Drury Lane, I am certain it sounds absurd to you. It was strange, because I could wait for years and years to marry Sophie and I had such a strong compulsion to make a declaration to you. Perhaps it was because I understood that there was a possibility that either of us could lose our mess number, that it was not so farfetched. I know you will scoff, but I had very nearly lost you in Mahón, Stephen. Then you were so terribly unwell for a very long time and I could not possibly burden you that way. All of your energy had to be directed to convalescing. That day was to be our last day together on land and alone for a very long time. I did not walk in with the idea of saying anything to you. We were talking and I felt such strong affection for you, as though my heart should burst. I could not possibly not say something to you."  
  
"You were very brave."  
  
"You were the one who stood up and kissed me on the mouth. All I had done was kiss your hand."  
  
"Your meaning was perfectly unambiguous. The way you looked at me."  
  
"Were you shocked?"  
  
"I was so very happy, soul. I could register nothing else. I suppose I was surprised, but primarily I was just so happy. I do not think anything in my life has ever seemed more unlikely and made me happier. I had resigned myself to never intimating anything of the sort to you ever in any way. I was very low that afternoon. I had been extremely lonely that day; I was in pain and very discouraged over the state of my hands."  
  
"I have never felt for anyone as I feel for you, Stephen.” Jack said, very quietly.  
  
"How were you so brave?"

  
"It did not seem so brave."  
  
"What if I had rejected you? You must have been very sure of yourself."  
  
"I was not sure at all. I could not even think of what would happen next."  
  
"Had you considered it at all? Rejection, humiliation, disgrace, potential ruin?"  
  
"Is that what you thought should happen if you had said anything to me?" Jack said, surprised.  
  
"No, soul, because that would never happen. I would never go so far as to do anything that would risk our friendship."  
  
"Did you think I should actually break with you?"  
  
"I did not know and I was not about to find out."  
  
"I thought it was a possibility, Stephen. I hoped not, that if you did not reciprocate my feelings you at least cared for me enough that you would figure a graceful way to demur without breaking with me altogether and that you should not be so spiteful as to personally ruin me. You expressed rather liberal views on other people’s pederasty. I hoped you would not feel the need to punish me for expressing my love and esteem for you."  
  
"Were you shocked by what we did that afternoon?  
  
"Well, soul, it was not like we were schoolgirls." Jack said, getting very pink.  
  
"Had you thought about it?"  
  
"Not exactly." Stephen restrained a smile.  
  
"You were very brave, soul."  
  
"Not so brave. I was moonstruck in love with you." Stephen stroked his hair.  
  
"Aye. But I was as well and I should have gone to my grave never having breathed a word of it to a living soul. I loved you so much that I thought it should kill me if you broke with me, Jack." Stephen said.  
  
“Could you really have thought me so unkind and ungrateful, Stephen?” Jack said. “We had been friends for five years, had lived together, you had taken me through France when the war started again and had nursed me for months in your castle in Spain -- could you really think I should break with you? Did I seem such a cold-hearted scrub?” “Scrub” had not been the first word that had come to his mind, but Jack had blessedly restrained himself from using the word “bastard,” given that Stephen took such great umbrage at it. Still, he regretted the harshness  of his words, seeing the expression on Stephen's face.  
  
“Dear joy, it had less to do with you than with me. You may not have formally broken with me immediately but it might have changed the way you felt about me forever so that you were no longer comfortable in my presence, making it the case that we would not actually be friends. I could not bear that thought. Your friendship meant too much to me.” Stephen said. He looked out the window at the moonlight on the waves. Jack saw the familiar look of pain, sadness and a dazed distraction returning to Stephen’s face. He bent forward, kissing Stephen’s neck and breathed in his ear.  
  
“Stephen, 'tis late. Pray let us seize the moment.” Jack whispered and he reached into Stephen’s breeches to loosen them. "I have talked far too much. Let us make love and fall asleep together in my cot." Jack said, his heart sinking fast. Stephen had that almost sleepy, distracted and deeply melancholic look that Jack knew so well and assumed was profound heartache and pain and Jack blamed himself utterly. "Laid by the lee again, God damn my eyes." he thought.  
  
"Jack, do you forgive me?" Stephen said, looking out the window at the waves.  
  
"There is nothing to forgive. It don't signify. We have been lovers for ten years. You got out of your chair and stared me down as you kissed me on the mouth. My God, I did not have the stones to do such a thing. You started undressing me. You could barely stand and you locked the door and put your hands in my breeches."  
  
"Did I?"  
  
"You did. You quite shocked me, Doctor." Stephen turned, a glimmer of light in his eyes.  
  
"Then what did I do?"  
  
"You pulled my clothes off. We were lying naked in your bed. You could barely hold a glass in your hand and you took my clothes and your clothes off."  
  
"Go on, Jack." Stephen said, kicking his shoes off and pulling off his stockings.  
  
"Do you not remember?" Jack said, pretending to be aghast.  
  
"Remind me, if you please." Stephen said, putting his hand in Jack's breeches, loosening the girth and unbuttoning the placket.  
  
"You corrupted me. You seduced and corrupted me and I was an innocent mere lad of scarcely thirty-two years. You have continued to corrupt me for the last ten years."  
  
"Specifics, if you please." Stephen said, with mock severity. "What exactly happened next?" Jack was bright pink. His reaction was unfeigned. His voice changed back from his tone of jest to his normal voice though extremely low.  
  
"Stephen, I cannot..." Jack said, his face going scarlet.  
  
"Whisper in my ear." Jack did so. "Ah, I remember now." He looked into Jack's eyes and kissed him deeply. "Come, let us take off our breeches." They stood up and took them off, folding them and putting them on a chair. "You realise I remember everything, do you not? That I have relived that afternoon in my thoughts many times?" Stephen said, taking Jack’s and his own shirt off.  
  
"As have I." Stephen embraced him, kissing his neck.  
  
“Shall I corrupt you more, Jack?” He said very softly in Jack's ear.  
  
“If you please.” Jack said and his hands trembled. They sat down on the stern lockers and Jack sat between Stephen’s legs, his head lying back on Stephen’s shoulder as Stephen reached into Jack's small clothes and Jack gasped and shuddered as Stephen grasped his prick, stroking his foreskin and then sliding it with his fingers back and forth as Jack's breathing quickened.  
  
"I never wanted anyone as much as I wanted you that day, soul." Stephen whispered in Jack's ear. "I was afraid that I was dreaming, delirious. I had dreamt of being with you so many times. When I kissed you, I thought it was an impossibility for any human being to be as happy as I was in that moment. Then we took our clothes off and I forgot the pain I was in, forgot my hands, forgot everything except for you.” He kissed Jack’s neck and slid his hand down to Jack's scrotum and stroked along the raphe. "That afternoon was one of the happiest moments of my life. I had no idea how much it would mean until it happened. Our friendship meant more to me than virtually anything and that afternoon deepened it ten thousand fold. I could not possibly conceive of such a thing until after it actually occurred." Jack's body trembled against him. "I must move." Stephen said and he knelt between Jack's legs and took Jack's prick in his mouth. Jack moaned as Stephen drove him rapidly to the edge of the precipice of climax.  
  
"Stephen, if you please, may we do what we did later now? It is already late now. Avast, Stephen, if you please -- not yet, not yet." Jack said, panting and pushing Stephen away from him. Stephen looked up into his face.  
  
"With all my heart. And you shan't yet, joy. Never fear." Jack was hyperventilating. "Slow breaths or you shall faint. Shall I stop touching you? Is it too much?" Jack shook his head. Stephen stood up and positioned Jack's body and took his carotid pulse.  
  
"Stephen..." Jack said, hoarsely.  
  
"Ta, ta, ta. All is well, do not breathe so fast and shallow, I beg. I should not wish to explain to Killick how you fractured your skull with us naked. Ah, now where were we? Yes." Jack moaned as Stephen caressed him anew, using both hands. "Do you have sweet oil in here?"  
  
"In my desk drawer. The brown bottle you gave me." Stephen got the bottle and unstoppered it and poured it in his hand and closed it. He put the oil on himself and Jack.  
  
"Roll over on your back. " Jack did so. "Let us try this. The lockers are not a bed." He stroked Jack with his hand whilst putting more oil on his own erection, then rubbed himself against Jack’s perineum and anus, penetrating him slowly as he stroked Jack's erection."Bear down and blow softly through your lips, joy, always. Yes? Ah."Stephen said and he thrust slowly. Jack pulled him closer and deeper. Stephen stroked Jack’s torso and he gasped and shuddered as Stephen thrust faster. Stephen bent forward and kissed Jack and looked into his eyes and leaned forward, whispering in his ear. Jack stroked his face and cried out softly as he spent, quickly pressing his lips against Stephen's shoulder. Stephen felt himself letting go and spent shortly thereafter and Jack stroked his face and kissed his neck.  
  
"I am worn out. Go to the cabin; I shall get our things." Jack said, yawning. Stephen stood up and stretched.  
  
"We are, indeed, not schoolgirls." Stephen said, kissing Jack's shoulder and staggering to the sleeping cabin, more fatigued than he had realized until that moment. Jack came in, they put on their nightshirts and then Jack easily lifted Stephen into Jack’s own cot and half-hopped and half-rolled in himself. Stephen groaned as Jack’s body squeezed his meagre frame against the edge of the cot.  
  
"If you ever hoist your flag, you are getting a bigger cot, Jack Aubrey."  
  
"Nonsense. This one is fine." Jack said, kissing Stephen's neck and snuggling into him.  
  
"I lost a stone since the end of March and you apparently found it." Stephen said as Jack kissed his neck again.  
  
"Sleep tight, brother." Jack said, yawning.  
  
"What other option is there?" Stephen said, disappointed that Jack had missed this witticism as Jack's snores gently reverberated. Stephen retrieved his balls of wax from the pocket of his nightshirt, put them in his ears and closed his eyes and drifted off.  
  
 _28 May 1815_  
  
 _Will I ever stop blaming myself for Diana’s death? Retrospection is so cruel. Intellectually, I understand that there was nothing I might have done, save taking her away somewhere with no horses and no coaches that would have averted this end, an existence for which she would be ready to desert me in less than a month’s time. Given the resources and the opportunity and her high spirited nature, an accident of this type was perhaps inevitable. With the exception of making her promise to never take Brigid on the box with her, I never intimated in anyway that there was anything dangerous about her driving. Even that promise was extracted more because of a terrible premonition about Brigid than my cognizant acknowledgement of Diana’s driving for what it was: supremely reckless. I should have defended her ability to anyone until the very moment I opened Clarissa Oakes' letter, informing me of her death._  
  
 _Now, I see that judgment as part and parcel of our entire relations: my complete inability to meaningfully criticise Diana in any manner, no matter how lovingly or well-intentioned it would have been, nor to brook any criticism of her from any quarter, no matter how gently tendered;  my total abdication of critical thinking as it concerned her: **my** moral failing, not Diana's in any way. I called that love. I believed love to be knowing another's faults and loving them anyway; acknowledging but refusing to condemn any fault in one's beloved. I should still call it love, were it not for the fact of four people dead, irrefutable evidence of my blindness, of my own complete moral dereliction and cowardice. I may have angered her, indeed, I may have enraged her, but no stake could have been greater than her life.  In this, I utterly failed her:   **Peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo, opere, et omissione:  mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.**_  
  
 _Holy Mother of God, pray for me now and at the hour of my death, for God’s forgiveness of me, I beg of you._  
  
 _Diana, pray forgive me, my love and may God bless you always._  
  
 _The sorrow of the world is to live the rest of one's life with the regret of words unsaid and what might have been. My earthly punishment is living with my failure for the rest of my life._  
  
 _Perhaps Jack is in some manner right with his argument about the relations between husband and wife.  Though his example and discussion of his relations with Sophie is exactly different from my own. His reticence is borne of the desire to avoid immediate conflict.  I did not hesitate to criticise Diana for the interest of keeping the peace between us. I did not refrain from criticising Diana because of her immediate would-be reaction, but because of my own sensibilities.  I cannot explain this to Jack. I do not wholly comprehend it myself, how much was willful blindness and how much was fear, of exactly what I cannot say. Not an argument, for we almost never argued. Another desertion to points unknown, possibly with Brigid in tow? Or Diana’s rejection of me, to the point of telling me there was no affection left at all between us and making the complete break I had been anticipating our entire acquaintance? I thought such an outcome the worst pain I could ever imagine. I was so very wrong._  
  
 _Jack also failed to understand that the issue was life and death, not a relative triviality like the presence of his very disagreeable mother-in-law over the years. Poor soul, was any example ever more poorly thought out and proffered for the approval of my silence than discussing the actions of a woman whose life my wife was responsible for ending? He is so kind and so very dear, the only sweetness in the bitter gall that has been my life since the end of March. No one ever had a dearer and kinder friend than have I in Jack. Our friendship is my sole joy in life. Natural philosophy is a potent distraction, I can lose myself for hours but my only true happiness is time spent with Jack._  
  
 _Jack and I had a long talk tonight about when we first met and the day he declared his affection to me. This conversation seems more evidence of my cowardice. Were it not for his initiative, our relations would never have commenced. He dismisses how much courage it took on his part to make a declaration. He seemed shocked by the idea that I thought it conceivable that he should break with me completely over such a declaration. I tell myself it was a mark of how high my esteem was for him, how important his friendship was to me. I have no doubt that my friendship meant as much to him, he esteemed me similarly. Yet he had the ability to make such a declaration and I did not. Perhaps it is because of his natural sanguine optimism.He strides through life assuming the best, without a trace of the enthusiast. No man ever had greater fellow-feeling than he. Perhaps this where his fabled luck springs from, the creature, his modest yet well-founded assumption that his affections will naturally be reciprocated, versus my own assumptions and experiences. Or perhaps my reluctance to ever divulge such a confidence is another strange example of my cowardice brought about by love and fear. Perhaps the two cases are not that different. I dared not offend Jack by declaring my physical attraction for him and thereby lose his love and esteem forever. I dared not criticise Diana in any way and thereby face rejection and permanent physical alienation from her. Perhaps these experiences say something about my fear of loss, something I have never really considered before. Upon reflexion, I have lost virtually every person of significant attachment somewhat precipitously. After almost two decades as a physician, I should be inured to this fact of life.  Evidently, I am not._  
  
“Wittles is up, your Honour.” Killick said, to Stephen.  Stephen blotted and closed his journal and joined Jack.

“God and Mary be with you, Jack” Stephen said, sitting down.

“Good morning, Doctor. Did you sleep well?”

“Quite well, I thank you.”

“Coffee?”

“If you please.” Jack poured a cup and passed it to him. Killick came in bearing plates of eggs and bacon and Stephen’s toast rack.

“We may see Heneage at some point today and I hope that we may be having supper with him. And Stephen, you might want to see to your sla -- that is to say, the children. Mrs. Skeeping is apparently agitated on their behalf.”

“I shall.”

“Have you seen Dr. Jacobs?”

"Briefly, very briefly. I shall be making rounds later.”

“Well, very good. By the way, I spoke to Chips this morning and when he is free, he shall be making me a new cot. You are right, Stephen, I have seemed to have gained some girth. No sense in being cramped in my old age.”

“Indeed.”

“I should not want the fates to believe that I was waiting to get a new cot should some event happen and then have it never happen because of anyone’s hubris in making that type of an assertion.”

“Ah, I see. That is excellent logic, Jack. And very good to know.” Stephen said, watching Jack tuck into his eggs and bacon.”Very good to know, indeed,” and Jack Aubrey looked up to see Stephen fighting hard to suppress a wry smile.


End file.
